A Bowtie Project by Michael Parker

Opening: Saturday March 15th @ 4pm to Sunset

The Bowtie Project

2800 Casitas Ave. (Apprx.)

Los Angeles, CA 90039

Photos by Alexis Chanes and Emma Sheffer

The Unfinished is an obelisk-shaped excavation located along the banks of the channelized LA River. The horizontal excavation, dug into and through the asphalt of an empty industrial lot, is a 137-foot to-scale replica of the Ancient Egyptian archeological site known as “The Unfinished Obelisk.” A series of performances and events will take place on and around the obelisk throughout the Summer of 2014.

“The Unfinished Obelisk” was begun during the reign of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, as one of her many monumental architectural commissions. The obelisk was to be carved from a single piece of granite and stand 137-feet tall, dwarfing all prior obelisks. The project was abandoned when a fissure was discovered while carving directly into the quarry’s bedrock. For thousands of years the obelisk has laid in its broken, unfinished state, just a few miles from the Aswan Dam on the Nile River. Referred to as the High Dam, the dam was built in the 1960's to control annual floods, provide irrigation and generate hydroelectricity. To this day, "The Unfinished Obelisk" is the largest known ancient Egyptian obelisk, despite the fact that it has never been raised.

The Bowtie Project is a year and a half long collaboration between Clockshop and California State Parks to place site-specific artworks on an undeveloped, post-industrial lot in the Rio de Los Angeles State Park. This lot, nicknamed the "Bowtie" for it's unique shape, is slated to become parkland in conjunction with the larger revitalization of the Los Angeles river. The Unfinished is the first in a series of new art works at the Bowtie Project.

Michael Parker is a Los Angeles based artist whose practice explores individual agency and collective action. He employs sculptures, publications and events to explore ideas of temporality, absurdity, pragmatism, hierarchy and consumption. His projects consistently engage with unexpected partners such as Cold Storage construction workers, Linemen-in-training or sauna enthusiasts in the Steam Egg . He has worked with the LA Department of Cultural Affairs, Human Resources, Machine Project, Public Fiction, Control Room, The Center for Land Use Interpretation and High Desert Test Sites. Michael holds a BA from Pomona College and an MFA from USC. He teaches sculpture at California State University, Long Beach.

Interview with Michael Parker and a history of The Unfinished.

building: a simulacrum of power

A performance by Rafa Esparza with Rebeca Hernandez

Sunday August 24th

Performance @6:45pm Sharp

For the site specific work building: a simulcarum of power, Rafa Esparza will hold with his parents and 5 siblings a collaborative, labor intensive residency prompted by the historical precedents of power and labor dynamics referenced in Michael Parker’s The Unfinished. Their focus during this residency will be on the production of handmade adobe bricks and will culminate in an evening of performance by Esparza and choreographer/dancer Rebeca Hernandez.

Image Courtesy of Rafa Esparza.

Los Angeles County Bike Collective Ride to The Unfinished

Sunday July 6th @ 12pm, Ride Out @ 12:30pm

The Unfinished will also be open this day to the general public as part of it's monthly schedule from 2-6pm. Parking is available on site. Children and dogs welcome.

Katie Grinnan & The Summer Solstice

Saturday June 21st

Wizard Brew Drinks @7pm

Performance @7:45pm Sharp

Artist Katie Grinnan and her Astrology Orchestra will perform on "The Unfinished" in celebration of the 2014 Summer Solstice and the longest day of the year. Grinnan and her brewery Wizard Brew, will also be serving a special beer for the occasion made from an ancient egyptian recipe.

The Astrology Orchestra is a system-based composition that uses astrology to map out Grinnan's birth chart from the perspective of the planets in our solar system. The Astrology Orchestra has played at multiple sites; around the 60 inch telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory as part of the show KNOWLEDGES, at the Venice Beach Biennial organized by Ali Subotnick, at the Integratron presented by LAND, and most recently at Human Resources, a culminating show with video footage of the three sites also presented and supported by LAND. Each context serves as a different lens, through which to view the orchestra, shifting the way the piece is perceived.

Grinnan has exhibited at the Whitney Museum in New York, MOCA in Los Angeles, and Modern Art Oxford in the UK. She will participate in the upcoming show Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum as part of the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LAMOA). Grinnan lives and works in LA.

Image courtesy of Jeff Mclane

Egyptologist Maggie Geoga reads "The Doomed Prince"

Friday April 11, 2014 @3pm

Egyptologist Maggie Geoga will read the ancient Egyptian story “The Doomed Prince” at the Bowtie Parcel on the site of Michael Parker's The Unfinished. Dating from the 18th Dynasty and translated from Hieratic text, the story is one of the most frustrating and famous of the ancient Egyptian texts. Preserved on Papyrus in the British Museum of London, the original ending of the story was lost in an explosion. Eternally incomplete, the story has been translated dozens of times and the ending continually speculated upon by readers and scholars alike for decades.

Maggie Geoga is a graduate student in Egyptology at Brown University, where she studies ancient Egyptian language and literature. She has worked at the Field Museum in Chicago, assisting in the collection and analysis of CT scans of Egyptian human and animal mummies and working on the Predynastic Project. Her research interests include ancient Egyptian conceptions of truth and fiction in historical writing, the transmission of narrative texts across time and space, the love songs of Deir el-Medina, and mortuary religion in the Pyramid Texts.